Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals

Comcast has hired public affairs veteran Angela Vega as director of government affairs for the Central Valley. Vega, who will be based in Fresno, Calif., will report to Sue Vaccaro, senior director of government Affairs for Comcast California. In her new job, Vega will be responsible for Comcast’s local government affairs and policy issues in Fresno, Madera, Kings, Tulare, and Santa Barbara counties.

Wi-Fi chipset vendor Quantenna Communications has raked in $22 million in its latest investment round and added two members to its board of directors in the process. Leading new investors in the latest round were Centerview Capital Technology, Vivint and NTT Group. In tandem with the financing, founding partner of Centerview Capital Ned Hooper and Harold Hughes were appointed to Quantenna’s board.

The blow that the hacking attack has dealt Sony is spreading beyond the entertainment corporation itself to theater chains and movie goers alike. And the financial toll is adding up too. Threats of violence against movie theaters. The New York premiere of "The Interview" canceled. Leaks of thousands more private emails. Lawsuits by former employees that could cost tens of millions in damages.

CableLabs said six vendors participated in an interoperability test of some DOCSIS 3.1 equipment. CableLabs declined to identify any of the vendors present. A spokesperson for the organization said that the types of devices present included at least one CMTS, one cable modem, and some test equipment.

T-Mobile is going commercial with an idea that undermines one of the fundamental tenets of the broadband industry: data is not a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. From now on, if a T-Mobile customer pays for X amount of a data a month, they get to keep the allotment and roll it over into the next pay period.

Vudu is adding features that other services introduced some time ago, but is going further than many rivals by letting viewers select sub-genres (action comedies, buddy comedies, etc.), or all movies by plot (heros, romance, time travel, etc.), or mood, or years (the ‘30s, the ‘70s, etc.)

After an impasse that stretched back several years, Comcast finally has brokered a deal with Roku that allows its subscribers to access HBO Go and Showtime Anytime streams on their Roku devices. The new deal was announced on Tuesday in a blog posting by Comcast’s Matt Strauss, senior vice president and general manager, video services, and came the day after HBO announced its streaming service was live on the Amazon Fire TV.

Multi-screen vendor Alticast will bring its cloud-based and Internet of Things (IoT) demos and products to next month’s Consumer Electronics Show as well as its CableCard-less security technology offering. With the recent passage of the STELA bill that dropped the mandate for CableCards, Alitcast’s AltiProtect demo at CES is noteworthy as the U.S. cable industry considers other security options that have been deployed abroad for years.

The Internet of Things and connected consumer electronics devices are morphing the technical needs of consumers, according to a recent report. Park Associates' research found that more than 56 percent of smart home device owners were willing to pay extra for monthly tech support services.

In order to forestall any future litigation, Verizon and Google announced today that they have entered into a long-term cross license agreement that covers a wide range of their respective products and technologies. With the agreement in hand, Verizon and Google said they could focus on running their businesses without the risk of future patent litigation between the two.

With Baton Rouge, La. going live last week, Cox Communications is close to having its home automation and security service launched across its entire footprint. The Cox Homelife service, which was first trialed in Phoenix three years ago, will be completely launched once Cox deploys it in Florida and Georgia in early February.

Ahead of a launch with a large North American cable operator, Deluxe announced today that it has added key 4K features and capabilities to its cloud-based content supply and video-on-demand (VOD) management platform. New 4K features for Deluxe OnDemand include digital re-mastering using High Efficiency Video Encoding (HEVC) or H.265, and Higher Dynamic Range (HDR) displays, such as Dolby Vision.

In a lab test, Orange and Ericsson achieved up to 300 Mbps using FDD technology, a version of LTE that aggregates bandwidth in two different frequency bands. The test confirms the potential of using 3.5 GHz FDD technology to increase mobile broadband capacity.

David Kniffin has joined Lightpath, a division of Cablevision, as its senior vice president and chief administration officer. In his new job, Kniffin is now in charge of all Lightpath’s finance and administrative functions. As senior vice president of financial planning at Cablevision, Kniffin worked on the financial reporting, budget and forecasting processes for Lightpath and other Cablevision business units.

Cable over builder RCN has scored a multiplatform carriage agreement with One World Sports. Starting Tuesday, current and new RCN digital subscribers will be able to access One World Sports’ video content in RCN’s New York market and in most of the other sustems in its footprint.